Search This Blog

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Spider-Man's Custody Battle

As many have heard Sony and Disney are having a little tiff about profit sharing and Disney has elected to use Spidey's involvement in the MCU and Kevin Feige's involvement in Spider Man movies as bargaining chips to have an even profit split. Understandably, people are upset, and I'm being unironic here people love these characters and love seeing these characters interact and this tiff is putting this in jeopardy, but I find the discourse incredibly troubling.



First off there is the "what-about-ism" argument regarding the Amazonia wildfires. Obviously we should be more concerned about environmental disasters than who shows up in the next Marvel movie. Of course we should raise awareness and do whatever we can to mitigate the damage these fires are doing to our planet, and the damage we ourselves are doing to our planet. The truth is, however, there are too many problems both serious and trivial in the world for any one person to worry about and deal with effectively. So shifting the argument to something else that is more important can be done infinitely and is entirely unproductive. Saying "Oh you think this Spider-Man thing is bad? What about Amazonia burning?" Does nothing but attack the other person's priorities, not their argument or their beliefs. Attacking people pisses them off and gets nothing done. So I appreciate all that has been done to bring the fires to public attention, but the hostile "whataboutism" employed is probably not the most effective way to spread the word.

Now that that's out of the way time to actually get down to the actual discourse surrounding Spidey's custody battle. Here are some tweets I found  on the #savespidermanfromsony hashtag:





First off its weird to me that people are defending Disney here. Disney is the aggressor in this situation. THEY pulled Spidey from the MCU and prohibited Feige from producing because Sony wouldn't agree to an adjusted profit share. A profit share of Sony's movies. Yeah, Spider-Man Homecoming, and Spider-Man Far From Home are Sony's movies not Disney's. Disney lent Kevin Feige's producing skills and allowed Sony to use MCU characters and ideas in Sony's Spider-Man movies in exchange for a portion of the profits and usage of Sony's Spider-Man in Disney's MCU films. Sony is just doing what they can to ensure their continued control over the most recognizable and popular comics character. If they lose Spider-Man to Disney in any way that would strengthen Disney's stranglehold on the entertainment industry. That is NOT a good thing. By insisting that Spider-Man is theirs Sony is striking a precision blow against Disney that while not bringing the mouse to his knees, has got to sting a little.

There is also a really weird and interesting reality bleed thing going on here. People are engaging with the discourse as if Peter Parker and his related characters are real people and that this injustice is being done to them. Of course I don't mean to suggest that these people legitimately believe Spider Man is real, they obviously don't and this is just a cute and engaging way to talk about the situation. What's caught my attention is that its the dominant form of discourse on this topic. Even the hashtag itself suggests Spidey is a person who needs saving from Sony. This has the interesting effect of focusing the tone of the discourse away from the very real players involved here. We are giving IPs a human face and focusing on them. The one thing in the entire equation that can't be harmed. However the IPs aren't the only thing getting anthropomorphized with this style of discourse, it's also anthropomorphizing corporations. Now Marvel and Sony aren't complex structures of people collaborating for profit but are actors in a drama, and drama has good guys and bad guys. A narrative begins to form and in all the anthropomorphism we've forgotten what this is actually about.

People are being complicit in their own distraction. The problem isn't that Sony won't let Spider-Man play with all the other superheroes the problem is that Disney is aggressively trying to take greater control over an incredibly loved and recognized pop culture artifact. If they receive more of the profits from Spider-Man's movies they can assume greater claim to that character and can use that in negotiations to buy the character or even the studio that produces his movies. And you bet Disney was aware people would defend them in all this. Better than any other company Disney understands how to look like the good guy. Their entire business model is based around the image of the wholesome family friendly good guy, and they know it works. So they are unquestionably going to use that to their advantage, and it seems a lot of people are falling for it. But as Disney gets more and more control of our media they gain control of us. I know I may sound a bit tin foil hatty here, but I am being totally serious when I say that domination of a society's culture is a very effective way of controlling that society. It's probably secondary only to controlling that society's economy. I don't know about you but it looks to me like Disney's aiming for both.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)